Chapter Text
Something seems to have shifted in Clint after their visitors from Gotham, but Bucky can’t figure out exactly what it is.
They do manage to ride out the next day. Spring is in full bloom now, green sprouting everywhere, and Bucky is impressed by the changes Clint has managed in such a short time as baron.
Fields everywhere are being ploughed, rocks removed from the freshly-tilled soil to rebuild damaged walls. The people they pass no longer seem to regard them with suspicion, some even smiling and waving, or ducking a quick bow or curtsey — not out of fear, as Bucky used to see when he was a commoner watching a noble ride by — but out of genuine respect.
A woman with three little girls in tow, on her way to the market, even waves Clint down to stop him. He jumps from his horse immediately, and whatever she tells him has him picking her up and spinning her around in an enthusiastic embrace.
She whacks him on the shoulder as he drops her back to the ground but she’s laughing, and the little girls are cheering, and Clint remounts his horse with a smile as bright as sunshine.
“Her husband made it home from the North,” he announces jubilantly, and his joy in her good fortune is so evident that it warms Bucky to see it.
In fact, Clint is his usual, amiable self with everyone they pass — remarking on the status of the fields, asking about any signs of monsters or curses, inquiring into needs and woes and injustices that Rumlow and the war may have caused that he might have the power or means to set right. And yet, when they ride on again and it’s just Clint and Bucky, Clint seems unusually quiet.
He keeps sneaking sidelong glances at Bucky, and barely says a word, frowning in thought from time to time. It’s disconcerting at first, and soon becomes downright irritating.
“Are you worried about riding too close to Stark Tower?” Bucky finally snaps. “We can go in the other direction if it is making you so wary.”
“What?” Clint seems to startle out of his ruminations. “What do you mean?”
“Pierce’s curse hasn’t taken me for weeks, and yet all of a sudden you seem to be checking me every few moments for a relapse,” Bucky grumbles. “If you feel that I can’t handle riding this way —”
Clint reins Arrow to a sudden stop, and Bucky follows suit. He hadn’t meant to let his temper get the best of him so, and he’s already starting to regret it.
“In all honesty, I had forgotten about Pierce’s curse,” Clint admits, to Bucky’s surprise. “I — I was thinking of something else.”
“What else?”
Clint hesitates. “There’s a clearing ahead. Shall we stop for lunch?”
Now Bucky’s the one who’s wary. “Aye.”
They hobble the horses and unpack the food. To Bucky’s surprise, Clint pauses, and then pulls off his padded jerkin and shirt, making room for Bucky to sit in front of him.
Bucky finally nods, watching relief wash over Clint’s face. He settles in, his shirt pulled up so that his back is pressed against Clint’s chest, skin to skin, letting the warmth of the contact thrum through him. He does not actually need more contact right now, but he cannot see Clint’s expression this way, and he thinks perhaps that is why Clint has suggested it.
Clint hands Bucky a chunk of bread and cheese and takes another for himself. He chews in silence for a moment, and then sighs so deeply that Bucky can feel the heave of his chest.
“Jason said something that I cannot stop thinking of,” Clint finally says, haltingly. “He said that … that we are happy in our marriage. And I was wondering, if you thought that to be true?”
“I —” Bucky starts, and stops, truly considering it.
“Do not feel that you must say aye,” Clint rushes to add. The fingers of his right hand tangle with Bucky’s, weaving between the cursed ring and the delicate one. “I know that this was not of your choosing, it seems absurd to even hope that —”
“I’m not unhappy,” Bucky interrupts, before Clint can talk himself into a tizzy. “I — whatever I expected, or feared, you have been — the most considerate person I could have possibly been bound to.” He thinks about it a moment more, trying to put words to the way he’s felt since arriving at Waverly.
“I feel safe,” he finally decides upon. “And — and mayhap even useful at times. I don’t know — I don’t know if I am —” He feels his throat grow tight. “How can I be permitted to be happy, after what I’ve done?”
Clint is quiet for a long moment. Bucky listens to the wind rustling the grass, and a birdsong in the distance. The world seems beautiful right now, bursting with life, and what right does he have to be in it, safe and clean and well-fed, despite the corrosion of his soul? How can he clasp hands with Clint — feel the warmth and comfort of his touch — knowing that he killed scores of innocents with those same hands?
How can a man like Clint — good, and kind, and honest — even stand to be near him, knowing what he has done? He starts to pull away, but Clint’s arms tighten gently. Not trapping him, but encouraging him to stay.
“Loki,” Clint says suddenly, his voice hoarse as if the word hurts to say. “Loki fed on … chaos. Strife.” He swallows, the clicking of his dry throat loud next to Bucky’s ear. “He didn’t let me sleep, didn’t let me lose consciousness for a moment. He enjoyed that I was —”
He presses his forehead to the nape of Bucky’s neck. “ — Resisting.” The word bursts out of him, as if he had to force it free. “All my pain and anger — my curses and my screams. He licked it all up like honey from a comb. Sucked out every last drop, and left me hollow.”
His breath is ragged now, rasping against the nape of Bucky’s neck. “When Natasha freed me from him, I wanted to die for what I had done,” he continues. “How could I live, when so many of the people I harmed under Loki’s control did not? I could have — I would have — spent the rest of my life, crawling on my knees, seeking forgiveness. But Natasha said —”
He stops for a long moment, as if trying to formulate the words, or maybe just lost in the recollection. “She said there was nothing that Loki would like more. That he lapped up my pain while he had me in his control, and he would savor it all the more, knowing I was still in pain even once I had been freed.”
“So — what? To spite him, you forgave yourself?” Bucky feels himself trembling, the very notion of it churning some deep emotion he had managed to suppress. “Just — let it go?”
But Clint is already shaking his head, his forehead still pressed to the nape of Bucky’s neck as if the familiar contact is grounding him as well.
“I can’t let it go,” Clint says roughly. “I can’t forgive myself. I did those things, unwillingly though it was. I remember them, and I repent them.” He inhales deeply, and lets it out in a shuddering breath. “But I can — accept them, mayhap. Loki took me, as Pierce took you. And if Loki had taken Natasha instead — or Pierce had taken Steve —”
Bucky jolts at the very thought of it. He does not fully remember being captured, but he knows that Steve was there, that they were both in danger of falling. The notion that all of Steve’s goodness — all the golden rightness of him — could have been in Hydra’s grasp —
“He wouldn’t have — he would have found a way —” he finds himself protesting instinctively.
“To resist Hydra’s most powerful witches?” Clint’s voice is gentle, but relentless. “Impossible.”
And on some level, Bucky does know that. He was there — he saw so many try to resist. There was no escape save death, and that was an escape his healing denied him time after time.
Would it have been the same for Steve?
He can hold still no longer, and this time Clint releases him readily as he jolts to his feet and starts to pace.
Now that Clint has raised the spectre of it, he cannot banish it from his mind. Steve , on the table where Hydra’s witches carved up bodies and grafted on the tech, ignoring the screams of pain. Steve, in the chair where people were restrained as the witches violated and twisted and subjugated their minds.
Steve, on the battlefield with Hydra’s troops, with nothing but emptiness in his eyes and obedience in his mind —
“Why would you even —” He feels like he’s choking, an iron band tightening around his chest. “Why would you say something like that —”
“It hurts, I know,” Clint says softly. He is standing now too, but keeping his distance. “But tell me — if such had come to pass, would you blame Steve for what he did? Deny him forgiveness? Dishonor him by saying he was simply too weak —”
“Stop it!” He hadn’t meant to shout, but it’s enough to send the birds flying from the trees nearby. The forgotten bread and cheese is crushed in his metal hand, and he throws it to the ground.
“Just — stop for a moment,” he says more quietly, licking dry lips. He has to think , there must be some flaw in this logic, something he’s missing. Because if it were Steve —
If it were Steve, he would know for certain that there was nothing to forgive.
For the longest time, there’s nothing but the sound of his ragged breathing, and the rustling of the breeze through the leaves.
He opens his eyes again, not even realizing he had closed them, to Clint’s worried face.
“I’m sorry,” Clint blurts out, as if he’s been holding it in for a while. “I — I just wanted to ask if there was something I could do to make you happier, and instead I have made you miserable.”
“No, I —” Bucky pulls in a deep, shuddering breath. “You have walked this path, and you are trying to show me the way, whether I am ready to see it or not.”
Clint’s smile is wry. “Natasha shoved me down it, the first few steps, and mayhap I am copying her technique a bit too faithfully.”
He still looks worried, and for some reason that makes it easier for Bucky to open his arms. Clint moves close eagerly, wrapping Bucky up in a hug that seems to dissolve the last of the pressure in his chest.
And Clint was right — it did hurt, but mahap it needed to. Mayhap it was like an abscess that needed to be lanced, or a bone that needed to be reset. Mayhap if Clint continues to tell him that he can get better, some day he will believe it.